Public Bill Committee

[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]

Clause 19

Loss of Benefit Provisions

Tony McNulty: I beg to move amendment 94, in clause 19, page 23, line 45, leave out in England and Wales or Northern Ireland,.

This amendment ensures that the loss of benefit provisions in new section 6B of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 apply where a person in Scotland is cautioned for a benefit offence. As currently drafted, they apply to cautions in England and Wales or Northern Ireland, but not in Scotland.
I do not need to detain the Committee on this particular amendment. I apologise for there being Government amendments at all at Committee stage. There are others, but we have tried to keep them to a minimum.
As currently drafted, clause 19 applies to cautions only in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The amendment will mean that provision to remove or reduce benefit entitlement for a period of four weeks for all first offences of benefit fraud will apply to Scotland, so the provision will become UK-wide.

Amendment 94 agreed to.

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment 63, in clause 19, page 25, line 41, at end insert
(14) Sanctionable benefits shall be returned to the claimant with compensation where the benefit offence is attributable to a mistake made by the Secretary of State or anyone acting under his authority as provided in paragraphs (1) to (11) above.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess. Amendment 63 attempts to ensure that if a mistake is made, it is rectified not only with the restoration of the benefit, but with the payment of compensation to the people who have suffered the loss. We have concerns about this clause because it is a change from the current two-strikes rule to cover the loss of benefit after one sort of incident. We are worried that such an incident may include an administrative error as well as fraud. The clause strengthens any action that may be taken against a benefit claimant, so if it is proved that a sanction was taken as a result of an administrative error, the claimant should receive not only what they lost, but a form of compensation. I hope that the Government will appreciate that the amendment is fair and reasonable. Such a practice applies to many other cases in which someone has suffered a mistake. For example, it applies with tax credits, so it should also apply in this particular case.

James Clappison: It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess. I listened carefully to the detailed description of the amendment given by the hon. Member for Rochdale. Notwithstanding what he said, I have one or two concerns that the Committee should consider.
The hon. Gentleman might not have fully reflected on the effects that his amendment might have. He referred to the extension of the benefit sanction to include the case of one offence. In his opening remarks, he referred to that as one sort of an incident, but it is not; it is a benefit offence that would include all cases where somebody had been convicted of one or more benefit offences in any proceedings, had accepted an administrative penalty as an alternative to prosecution, or had agreed to be given a caution.
The amendment includes the word offence. Under the amendment, somebody who had committed an offence, including somebody convicted of an offence before a court, not only would be allowed to keep the money that he had wrongfully received, but would be given compensation as well when that was attributable to a mistake. However, the hon. Gentlemans amendment mentions a benefit offence, so to talk about a mistake misses the point about there being an offence. It would follow that, if there were some element of mistake in the background to someone being convicted of a benefit offencethis particularly concerns mesuch a person would then be entitled, under the terms of the amendment, not only to be allowed to keep the benefit that they had received, but to receive compensation as well. I look to the Ministers response, but because the amendment uses the word offence, the courts could interpret it as covering cases in which somebody had been convicted of a criminal offence.
Paul Rowenrose

James Clappison: If the hon. Gentleman wants to say that the word offence means something other than an offence, I shall look forward to his explanation.

Paul Rowen: I would only ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the clause. The terms that I have used are exactly the same as the ones in the clause.
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that if a mistake is madenot an offencethe clause should allow a claimant to be sanctioned either through the courts or though administrative means? We are saying clearly what should happen if an administrative sanction proves to be a mistake. I know of scores of cases in which that has happened. Does he not accept that an innocent party should be entitled to compensation, because that is what happens under tax credits?

James Clappison: The hon. Gentleman is even more confused than I thought he was in the first place. He talks about an innocent mistake, but his amendment does not refer to an innocent mistake. May I read his amendment to him, because he might not have reflected carefully on it during its drafting? It says:
Sanctionable benefits shall be returned to the claimant with compensation where the benefit offence is attributable to a mistake made by the Secretary of State or anyone acting under his authority as provided in paragraphs (1) to (11) above.
The hon. Gentleman refers to the Bill. When I made my first remarks on his amendment, I carefully set out the circumstances that were covered by the Bill: when somebody is dealt with by an administrative penalty or a caution or they are convicted before a court. The hon. Gentlemans amendment would cover all those circumstances, including the third onea convictionbut the first two deal with where an offence has been admitted and are alternatives to a matter being brought before a court and the person being subject to a conviction, if found guilty, because an administrative penalty and a caution both involve an admission of guilt.
The hon. Gentleman now says to the Committee that his amendment would deal with somebody who is innocent and where there has been a mistake. If there has been a mistake, there has not been an offence, because such a person would be able to plead not guilty to the charge and would be found not guilty if the courts accepted their version of events. If there were a wrongful conviction, they could appeal against it. However, the hon. Gentlemans amendment mentions an offence.
When somebody is subject to an administrative penalty or is given a cautionin both cases they will have admitted their guiltor is brought before a court and convicted and sentenced, if there has been an element of mistake in the background, as there often is on the part of the authorities in benefit fraud cases, that does not negate the dishonesty of the person who has committed the benefit offence. Things might begin with a mistake, but there has been an offence if someone has dishonestly received benefits to which they are not entitled.
Let us clearly set out the effect of the hon. Gentlemans amendment. Under it, someone who, in common parlance, would be called a benefit cheat would be entitled to receive the amount that they had wrongly been given and compensation on top. People who are convicted of these offences are sometimes given discharges, community sentences or suspended sentences. If the hon. Gentlemans amendment was passed and such people were able to establish that there had been some mistake somewhere in the background on the part of the administrative authorities or the Department for Work and Pensions, they could say, Oh yes, but Im entitled to keep what I received and I want compensation as well.
The hon. Gentleman is sending out a strange message. Many people are honest claimants of benefits, such as those who are in need and have circumstances that entitle them to benefits, or those who happen to have been made unemployedparticularly at this time. Such people honestly claim their benefits and go to great lengths to make sure that all their circumstances are known. What on earth are they supposed to think if somebody who has dishonestly received benefits is allowed to keep the fruits of their dishonesty and get compensation on top? I am not sure that that is something with which many of my constituents would agree. I might be wrong about this, but I am not persuaded by what the hon. Gentleman has said because he has used the word offence in his amendment. I believe that I have described the consequence of his amendment.

Paul Rowen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

James Clappison: Certainly, but the hon. Gentlemans last intervention did not help him.

Paul Rowen: I refer to proposed new section 6B(13) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001, as inserted by clause 19. It states:
In this section and section 6C...benefit offence means
and sets out clearly what a benefit offence is. The provisions to which the amendment would add also set out the circumstances in which any sort of benefit that had been withheld would have to be repaid. All we are seeking to do is to add to the provisions, not replace them.

James Clappison: I am not going to read the provisions out now, but I think that the circumstances to which they refer are, in effect, the same as those that I set out. What those circumstances cover are actually in the note supplied by the House of Commons Library. The hon. Gentleman may, with the best of intentions, have drafted a defective amendment, so I invite him to reconsider and withdraw it. If he wants to press the amendment to a Division, I will have no hesitation in advising my hon. Friends to vote against it, because the legal effect of what is proposed is dubious. Let him be in no doubt that his amendment refers to an offence. It would give compensation and benefits that had been wrongly received to somebody who had committed an offence, and we should not go down that road.

Ann McKechin: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess.
I think that it would be helpful if I were first of all to summarise the provision to which the amendment of the hon. Member for Rochdale relates. A one-strike sanction will apply to cases of benefit fraud that result in a conviction, or when a caution or administrative penalty is offered as an alternative to prosecution. There is a need for legal certainty and we need to make a clear distinction between a conviction, caution or administrative penalty on the one hand, and official error on the other. The sanctions are in respect of fraud, not official error.
Clause 19 allows for all benefit withheld as a penalty for benefit fraud to be repaid to the customer if a conviction is quashed. That also applies when an administrative penalty is no longer appropriate if, following a review or appeal under the internal procedures that already exist, it is decided that there was no overpayment, or that the sum is not recoverable. Those are obviously matters of fact. The Department already has a widespread scheme to provide redress for maladministration, which allows for compensation to be paid to customers in appropriate cases. If customers remain dissatisfied, a complaint can be made to the parliamentary ombudsman.
The hon. Member for Hertsmere raised an interesting point about the phraseology of the amendment and the fact that it may cover items and cases that the hon. Member for Rochdale did not intend to cover, such as if a mistake is actually a fraud perpetrated on the Department. In the light of that, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

Paul Rowen: I listened to what the Minister and the hon. Member for Hertsmere said, but I am afraid that I violently disagree with them. It is a sorry state when someone who has been subject to a sanction that has been wrongly administered is not entitled to receive compensation.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 1, Noes 14.

Question accordingly negatived.

Ann McKechin: I beg to move amendment 95, in clause 19, page 26, line 46, after sentenced) insert
or in the case mentioned in paragraph (b)(ii) the date of the order for absolute discharge.

This amendment is consequential upon amendment 96.

David Amess: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 96 to 98.

Ann McKechin: The amendments are intended to ensure that we can apply the new provision to all those who are found guilty of benefit fraud, including cases which result in an absolute discharge. The underlying principle of the new sanction is that all those who commit benefit fraud should be subject to the sanction. Absolute discharge means that the court is satisfied that the offender is guilty, but decides not to impose any type of sentence. We see no reason why such guilty offenders should escape the sanction.
Although relatively few cases receive an absolute discharge, we believe that it would be wrong to exclude them from the sanction, especially as those who receive a caution or administrative penalty for low-level benefit fraud as an alternative to prosecution will be sanctioned.
We also want absolute discharges to count for our existing two-strikes sanction in section 7 of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001. It would be inconsistent to apply the sanction to someone who receives an absolute discharge for a first offence, but not to apply it to those who are absolutely discharged for a second offence.
Amendment 98 corrects an error in paragraph 6(3)(b) of schedule 4 to the Bill. That paragraph amends section 11 of the 2001 Act in consequence of the new provisions introduced by clause 19, which provides for loss of benefit if a person commits a benefit offence.
Section 11 of the 2001 Act sets out when the affirmative procedure applies to regulations under the Act. The amendment ensures that the affirmative procedure applies to regulations made under proposed new section 6B(6) inserted by clause 19. The proposed new section allows, where the sanctionable benefit is income support, for regulations to prescribe the manner in which the offenders entitlement to income support may be reduced. The Government consider it appropriate for the affirmative procedure to apply to regulations made under the power. This will bring the position in line with regulations under subsections (7) to (10) of proposed new section 6B, which deals with reduction in other types of benefits.

James Clappison: I seek reassurance from the Minister on one point. I do not think that this will take terribly long. My concern is that the provisions should operate independently from the criminal justice system. I anticipate that that will be the case, because it is already the case when someone is convicted of two offences and is made subject to this particular form of sanction. That provision operates independently of the criminal justice system, and I understand that the same will apply in these circumstances.
Let me explain further, so that the Minister fully understands my concern. All benefit fraud offences are serious, but the degree of seriousness varies, and the public accept that. It is important that the courts consider the circumstances and seriousness of individual cases, and that they judge and pass sentence accordingly. The public are especially concerned by cases in which people have received large sums of money over a long period to subsidise a high lifestyle, and who might already have been receiving other income so that the benefits that they have wrongly received have been a top-up. In some such caseswe know that they existthe people concerned have lived a high, if not luxurious, lifestyle. I expect that those are the cases that the public want to be judged most seriously, and for which they would want people to receive combined punishments. That is our concern, but we recognise that the seriousness of cases varies and that they have to be judged accordingly.
We are particularly concerned about the people at the higher end of the scale. I am amazed that, notwithstanding the warnings that the Liberal Democrats have been given about the effect of their amendment, they would entitle such a person, in theory, to have their lawyers go back over the circumstances of the case, notwithstanding that they have been convicted of an offence or made subject to an administrative penalty or caution, to see if there had been any administrative mistake, and then to come back before the courts to get back the money that they had wrongly receivedhowever many thousands of pounds it waswith compensation on top. I do not want to put this too strongly, but some would call that a cheats charter coming from the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Member for Rochdale has been fully warned about this problem, and I am sure that his constituents will take a view on this issue. Many of them will feel, as we do, that people in particularly serious cases, who have got away with large sums of money, should receive combined punishments. I look to the Minister for confirmation that the provisions are quite independent of the criminal justice system.

Paul Rowen: If anyone is living in Alice in Wonderland, it is the hon. Member for Hertsmere. I have not said that anyone who is convicted of a benefit offence should not receive sanctions. I have made clear our view that compensation should be payable if the provisions have been administered incorrectly. The hon. Gentleman should concentrate on what the amendment says, and what is proposed, rather than imagining cases that do not exist.

Ann McKechin: I am pleased to confirm to the hon. Member for Hertsmere that the system is completely separate from the criminal justice system. He is absolutely right that we must all take benefit fraud seriously. The level of fraud across all benefits is down by more than two thirds from that in 2001. At 0.6 per cent. of expenditure, it is at the lowest level ever recorded, but we certainly are not being complacent. There is absolutely no excuse for fraud, and I do not consider that the hon. Member for Rochdale has grasped that fraud is not excusable in any circumstances. The taxpayer certainly should not, in any circumstances, end up paying back compensation to someone who has attempted to defraud the Department for Work and Pensions. I therefore ask hon. Members to support the amendments.

Amendment 95 agreed to.

Amendment made: 96, in clause 19, page 26, line 47, leave out from second to to end of line 49 and insert
(i) a conviction in relation to which the court makes an order for absolute or conditional discharge or a court in Scotland makes a probation order,
(ii) an order for absolute discharge made by a court of summary jurisdiction in Scotland under section 246(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 without proceeding to a conviction, and
(iii) .(Ann McKechin.)

This amendment ensures that new section 6B of the 2001 Act applies where a person is convicted of a benefit offence, but the court makes an order for absolute discharge. See also amendment 97.

Clause 19, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 4

Loss of benefit provisions: further amendments

Amendments made: 97, in schedule 4, page 84, line 15, at end insert
( ) In subsection (9)
(a) in paragraph (a), after sentenced) insert or in the case mentioned in paragraph (b)(ii) the date of the order for absolute discharge, and
(b) for paragraph (b) substitute
(b) references to a conviction include references to
(i) a conviction in relation to which the court makes an order for absolute or conditional discharge or a court in Scotland makes a probation order,
(ii) an order for absolute discharge made by a court of summary jurisdiction in Scotland under section 246(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 without proceeding to a conviction, and
(iii) a conviction in Northern Ireland...

This amends section 7 of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 so as to ensure that its provisions apply where a person is convicted of a benefit offence, but the court makes an order for absolute discharge. See also amendments 96 and 96.
Amendment 98, in schedule 4, page 86, line 35, leave out 6B(7) and insert 6B(6).(Ann McKechin.)

This amendment ensures that the affirmative Parliamentary procedure applies to the regulation-making power in new section 6B(6) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 (inserted by clause 19). The existing reference to new section 6B(7) is incorrect.

Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 21

State pension credit: pilot schemes

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment 60, in clause 21, page 30, line 16, after credit, insert and Carer Addition..

David Amess: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 61, in clause 21, page 30, line 18, after credit, insert and Carer Addition..

Paul Rowen: The clause deals with state pension credit, and we welcome its provisions, which introduce the possibility of pilot schemes of up to two years to increase the uptake of pension credit. The clause allows regulations to be made, permitting the payment of a state pension credit without a claim being made, and with modified rules concerning how the entitlement is to be determined. The success of such pilots will be judged on whether there is an increase in individuals claiming and receiving state pension credit. The pilots will last for up to 36 months.
The benefit, which was introduced to raise people above the poverty line, is failing due to a lack of uptake. It has increased, but after many years confusion about the pension system remains, and that is exacerbated by the complex bureaucratic forms that pensioners must fill out, and the means-testing to which pensioners are subject, in order to receive their benefits. The system does not deal with the needs of pensioners, as half of people over 65 years old do not like or seek financial advice. Indeed, Citizens Advice figures for 2006-07 showed that only 10 per cent. of its clients were over 65half the percentage of pensioners over that age as a proportion of the total population. Without essential advice, those who need pension creditvulnerable individualsdo not get it, because they are unaware of their rights.
There should not be any means-testing for pension benefits, because the system puts off older people from applying for certain benefits, and they end up losing in other areas. Uptake of pension credit is also further diminished by the fact that one in eight pensioners have still not heard of pension credit. These problems have, we estimate, led to £2.37 billion of pension credit going unclaimed. As such, each person loses on average £26.40 in unclaimed pension credit, an amount that could make a huge difference to peoples lives. Up to £5 billion of other essential benefits for older people are never claimed either, and against that background the clause is welcome because it seeks to extend state pension credit and to ensure that those who, for one reason or another, are not prepared to navigate the complex web of forms receive state pension credit.
The amendments would extend the pilots to include carers allowance in the pension credit scheme to ensure that carers who are entitled to pension credit are automatically assessed for entitlement to carers addition, which provides £27.75 in addition to the pension credit. If the automatic assessment is based only on income, some older carers may be left out when they would be entitled to pension credit if their caring responsibilities were known.
At present, carers must apply for carers allowance to receive the carers addition, which cannot be paid alongside the state pension, and then reapply for carers addition. That process would be much simpler if the carers allowance was integrated with the pension credit pilots. We welcome the pilots, but we hope that the Government will accept that it is sensible to include carers in the amendment.

Tony McNulty: May I sayI forgot to do so earlier what a glorious pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess? In my juvenile approach to these matters, I hurried along on the first amendment in the hope, which subsequently proved to be reasonable, that the hon. Member for Rochdale would not be here to move his amendment 63. I actually think he rather wishes that he had arrived a bit later.
I welcome the hon. Gentlemans welcome, but let us be clear. There is already a question on the pension credit form about whether the applicant is in receipt of carers allowance. There is no such thing in law as carers addition. The amendments effect would be that we could not in any circumstances automatically carry out the pension credit pilots that the hon. Gentleman welcomes. There is no such thing in the parent Act or other legislation as carers addition. I am sorry to be pedantic, but I can only work with the words that the hon. Gentleman used in his amendment. It is clear that he would not welcome exactly what the amendment would do.
I broadly accept what the hon. Gentleman says. Of course there are issues with take-up, but I do not agree entirely with his rather strangulated description of pension tax credit and take-up in the first instance. He seems to want to give the Royal Bank of Scotland chairman pension credit, regardless of the proper use of public funds. He seems to want every millionaire and everyone else who manages to reach the appropriate age to receive pension credit. That is not the best use of public resources. We are targeting the poorest pensioners, and that is entirely the right way to go.
There is no separate carer's addition. Pension credit provides an additional amount for older people who are also carers, but it is not separate from the pension credit entitlement; it is part of it. The amendment would not do what the hon. Gentleman wants it to, but would achieve the opposite, and we would not be able to get on with the automaticity pilots that he seeks and welcomes. I ask him in the nicest possible way to withdraw his amendment because it would not achieve what he wants.

Paul Rowen: I listened carefully to the Minister, but Carers UK states in its briefing:
Approximately 240,000 pension credit claimants received the Carer Additional in May 2008. Out of a total of 2.7 million pension credit claimants, this is nearly 10 per cent.
Is the Minister saying that Carers UK is wrong?

Tony McNulty: No, I am not. I thought that I had made that clear. The carers addition, which is an additional payment to pensioners who are also carers, is part and parcel of the pension credit. There is no separate legal entity under law in the State Pension Credit Act 2002 or any previous Act, so the amendment drafted by the hon. Gentlemannot the carers associationis completely perverse in terms of the ends that he seeks to achieve. I would rather he quit while he is ahead, withdraw the amendment and let us get on.

Paul Rowen: I am grateful for that clarification and beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

James Clappison: I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 21, page 31, line 10, at end add
(3A) Within six months of the expiry of the specified period referred to in subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall lay before each House of Parliament a report on the operation of the state pension credit pilot schemes established under these provisions..
We share the objective of seeking to ensure that pensioners receive what they are entitled to, and we are aware of the issues with take-up of pension credit which have been well ventilated on several occasions in the past, certainly by Members on this side of the House. The purpose of the amendment is to seek more information about how automaticity will work in the case of pension credit, because there seems to be a lack of specificity in some of the details in the Bill.
The regulation-making power that the Government are taking is wide-ranging but unspecific as to who exactly will be subject to it, other than that automaticity will be piloted in
one or more specified areas.
We believe that the areas will be relatively small in terms of populationaround 2,000 people in each casebut the Minister will no doubt correct us if we are wrong about that. We would like to know whether all pensioners eligible for pension credit will be subject to automatic payment of pension credit in the areas where it is being piloted. If they are not, we would like to hear from the Minister what the criteria are by which pensioners will be selected for automatic delivery of pension credit. We wait to hear more details on that, and if pensioners will be selected we would like to know whether matters such as age will play a part in the selection.
We would like to hear more details about how the piloting will work in the pilot areas, how pensioners will be selected or whether there will be selection at all, and when the pilots will begin and exactly how long they will last in each case.

Tony McNulty: Those are all perfectly reasonable questions. The hon. Gentleman is right that the pilot schemes are likely to be fairly small in scale and of limited duration. He will know that the clause allows for regulations that will be forthcomingwe hope as soon as possibleafter Royal Assent which will discuss in detail exactly how the pilots will work and how they will be designed and evaluated.
The Bill refers to
one or more specified classes of person
which will allow us, following further analysis and design, to target absolutely everyone in a small area as defined simply by age, or to target cohorts within the group. There will subsequently be many more details provided through regulations, and a chance through our usual processes to discuss them thoroughly.
The notion of automaticity is appropriate. With the best of intentions, many people, including lobby groups, decided that it was somehow not in their interest or in the interest of pensioners to encourage take-up because ofquite naturallythe view that somehow pension credit is charity, and something with which pensioners should not get involved. The opposite is the truth, and it is an entitlement that all pensioners should at least be able to afford themselves of.
Given that the specifics of the amendment are likely to be small in focus and duration and that there may well bewe have yet to determinea series of pilots in which one pilot learns from the other in a cumulative sort of way, the notion of putting in place a backstop at six months is probably not the best way forward. There will be evaluations of the pilots, which I can guarantee will be published. Therefore, via Pepper v. Hart, the assurance that the hon. Member for Hertsmere wants is covered in that regard. The Bill is about securing the principle and enabling the legislation to allow us to do that. Details of scope and duration are still to be determined, but we can discuss them more fully in regulation.

James Clappison: I am grateful to the Minister for his assurances. As I said in my opening remarks, we saw this as a wide-ranging power, and the Ministers remarks have confirmed that. We were seeking to elicit information about it to scrutinise what the Government are proposing. We shall continue to do so when we look at the regulations as and when they are made. Moreover, we want to scrutinise the evaluation of the pilot schemes as and when that is published. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making it clear that they will be published.
On the basis that we will know a bit more about this in the future, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 23

Contracting out functions under Jobseekers Act 1995

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment 67, in clause 23, page 33, line 3, at end insert
(d) shall specify the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants with mental and/or physical disabilities,
(e) shall specify the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants with caring responsibilities,
(f) shall specify the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants with drug dependency and alcohol issues,
(g) shall specify the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants who are lone parents with dependant children, and
(h) shall specify the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants who are lone parents and have been victims of domestic violence..
In many respects, clause 23 is at the heart of the Governments programme to contract out a range of services that are currently provided by JCP staff. When considering what happens when those contracts are made, it is very important that the staff who are employed by the various organisations have the right levels of qualifications. The amendment seeks to ensure that a level of training is provided so that the staff can meet the needs of the different claimants. Those claimants can include people with mental or physical disabilities, with caring responsibilities, with issues of drug and alcohol dependency, and lone parents with dependent children and lone parents who may have been subject to domestic violence. Those are some of the sorts of clients that JCP staff currently deal with. If, as is envisaged in this clause, a large number of functions will be transferred to other organisations, we believe that it is very important that a level of training is provided for staff.
Let me refer Members to the briefing that has been prepared by Rethink, an organisation that deals with mental health issues. The organisation quotes the research of the Department for Work and Pensions that suggests that even with pathways regimes, existing personal advisers admit that they lack knowledge and understanding of mental health issues. It states:
Mental health issues (including depression, suicide and self harm)...were particular areas (Incapacity benefit personal advisers (IBPAs)) reported having difficulties with. IBPAs did not feel their initial training had prepared them for working with these kinds of customers.
It also states that
12 per cent. of people with mental illness report being...discriminated against by Jobcentre Plus staff.
There is already an issue about the level of training of existing JCP staff. If more of the functions of JCP staff are to be given to a new organisationthat is an integral part of the Billit is imperative that a level of training is specified when the contracts are let. I appreciate that under the clause those organisations will not be able to impose sanctions; that still remains the responsibility of JCP staff. Nevertheless, if someone presents themselves to those staff with a particular illness it is important that the personal advisers dealing with them have the right level of training.
Rethink has provided an example of a personal adviser referring someone with a diagnosis of personality disorder and a history of mental health problems to a condition management programme for people experiencing chronic back pain. That is an example of something that has happened with existing staff. Many people with mental health problems feel insecure and discriminated against. If we are to extend the provision and increase widely the number of staff involved in such programmes, they should receive the appropriate training. However, that is not specified in the Bill. Obviously, that would be worked out when the contract is let and an agreement is made. It is important that the Department for Work and Pensions appreciates that there are issues to address in this area. We hope that the Minister feels able to reassure us that this sort of issue will be taken on board as the schemes are rolled out.

Tony McNulty: The hon. Gentleman raises some fair points, with which I have some sympathy, but his amendment highlights the dangers of trying to write commercial contracts into a Bill. Not least because he has used shall rather than may, he is saying that under the clause any contract, regardless of its content, should include
the level of training required to meet the needs of claimants
with mental health or drug dependency problems and all the other things he mentions. He is saying that every single contract made under powers allowed in the clause must specify the level of training for all those various areas, regardless of whether it is appropriate.
The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the need for providers to have appropriately trained staff, where it is deemed necessary to deliver the contract effectively. That will be adequately covered in the contracts, which will stipulate that the providers should not discriminate against any customer on the grounds of disability, whatever it is. We will ask bidders to describe any relevant skills that they have to enable them to address the specific needs of and barriers faced by their customers. We will ask about the specific information on the roles relating to, and the qualifications and experience required for, each post that are needed to deliver the provision, given the nature of the contract and the focus on the client group.
The procurement process will have requirements within terms and conditions of contracts for contractors to satisfy themselves that their employees are suitable in all respects to deliver the programme. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the vulnerable groups mentioned will all be given adequate protection. The contractors employees will possess the relevant skills, training and experience to enable them to deliver the provision effectively and address the specific needs of their customers and the barriers to work that they face.
When we use the powers in clause 23 to contract out functions, we will take steps to ensure that contractual employees are properly trained and equipped to deliver the programme.
It is quite right and proper that the perfectly reasonable concerns that we have discussed are matters for a specific contract, that it is for a specific provider to deliver a specific service and that such things should not be set out in the Bill. In that context, and having taken on board the hon. Gentlemans concerns, I ask him to withdraw the amendment for the reasons that I have outlined.

Paul Rowen: Amendment 67 was a probing amendment, and I am satisfied by the Ministers assurances. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 23 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 24 to 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 28

Purpose of Part

Mark Harper: I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 28, page 36, line 37, leave out aged 18 or over.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr. Amess. Part 2 of the Bill, which starts at clause 28, is about the right to control the provision of services to disabled people. Amendment 23 is a probing amendment, in which we seek to test why the Bills provisions are restricted to adults. The clause sets out the purpose of part 2 and does not in itself set out the right to control, which is dealt with in later clauses. However, I want to test the Minister on why we are limiting the provisions to adults. The Department for Children, Schools and Families is piloting individual budgets, but as the Minister will know from our evidence-taking sessions, having different Departments carrying out pilots on individual budgets with different rules and different processes is a step backwards, not forwards. It would be better for disabled people and their families if we had one seamless framework and set of rules. Apart from anything else, that would make it clear that where a disabled child and their family had the right to control the services that they received, there would be a seamless transition in the provision of those services as the child grew up and became an adult. As a result, they would not have to move from a framework that was run by the DCSF to one that was run by the DWP or the Department of Health.
The Minister will know, and it is commonly said, that there is already an issue in local government social care services with disabled childrens transition from receiving services provided by local government childrens services organisations to receiving adult services. That transition is not always as smooth as one would hope, despite the fact that the legal definitions of a child and an adult relate to being aged 18 and should therefore be pretty predictable to local authorities, which should be able to put in place plans to make the transition seamless.
I seek to test the Minister on whether removing the limit that restricts the provisions to those aged 18 or over and extending them to all disabled people would not only be a step forward and give disabled children and their families greater rights and control in general, but help with the transitional process involved in moving into adulthood.
The other issue is the cost, particularly where local government services are concerned. Have the Government assessed the possibility of having one set of processes to supply more personalised care and support packages for adults and one set that is designed for children, with different rules and different procedures? Have they assessed whether one, seamless framework would be more cost-effective, ensuring that more resources were used to deliver front-line services or give families an individual budget and a more direct payment, rather than being used on bureaucracy and unnecessary cost?
I will hold my comments about amendment 71 until we reach it; I will not stray out of order. That is all I want to say to the Minister for now. We will get to the wider issues when we move on to later clauses.

Jonathan R Shaw: In common with Committee colleagues, it is also my pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. AmessI have never heard a Member say anything else. That will stand me in good stead.
I thank the hon. Member for Forest of Dean for the amendment. He is right to probe and I welcome the spirit in which he chose his words. I shall provide details of why we are not including children at this stage, but first I shall answer a question immediately. The hon. Gentleman referred to the pilots that DCSF is undertaking, and working closely with it during those pilots, DWP will test the alignment. I shall talk about that shortly.
We are committed to extending choice and control to disabled people, which includes the empowerment of disabled children, young people and their families. The DCSF pilots will begin soon, and their evaluation will seek to establish whether individual budgets enable families with disabled children to exercise more control and choice over the delivery of their support packages. It will also examine whether individual budgets improve outcomes for some or all disabled children and their families. The pilots will tell us which services and funding streams are suitable for inclusion in individual budgets for children.
Disabled children cannot exercise the same direct user control as many disabled adults. They have different needs from adults and access different services, which are provided under a different statutory framework. That is why a specific childrens pilot is requiredto determine how best to ensure that the appropriate services are developed to meet childrens needs. There are also issues about how childrens rights to individual budgets interplay with the rights of parents, and how those rights interact with provisions in childrens legislation, so it is neither timely nor appropriate to introduce legislation before those issues have been explored further.

Mark Harper: I am grateful for that outline. I am not sure about the language, but the hon. Gentlemans Department has decided to call its pilots trailblazers. In one sense I welcome that, because it implies that the Department is committed to rolling out individual budgets, as it explicitly stated in the White Paper. The pilotsthe trailblazersare designed to work out how best to do so, and the commitment to do so is clear. I am not sure from what he said about DCSF, however, whether that Department has taken the decision in principle to roll out individual budgets because the evidence is clear that pilots deliver significant benefits and the pilots will test how best to do so, or whether the pilots will test whether or not the Department is going to roll out individual budgets. His Departments commitment is clear, but is DCSFs commitment equally clear in principle? If so, is it simply testing how best to deliver those individual budgets?

Jonathan R Shaw: The Government have made a commitment to devolving choice to the individual regarding services, but to answer those questions fully one needs to make an assessmenthence the piloting. There are different sets of legislation on the different issues of parents responsibilities and childrens rights. If we were to set our face and say, This is how its going to be, before the outcome of those pilots or trailblazerswhatever fantastic word we want to attach to themthe hon. Gentleman might accuse us of having an ideology without having worked out how to do things. We need to understand those complexities, and we are fully committed to doing so.
My colleagues and I have set out our ambition many times, and I know that the hon. Gentleman shares that ambition. It is also welcome to people who depend on services and who want to be empowered by being in control of care and support services as well as services that support them in work or other aspects of their lives. He is right to talk about that transition period between childhood and adulthood, and I know that my colleague, the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Phil Hope), is working on that aspect at the moment. It seems to be one of our biggest challenges to get that policy right. It is sometimes frustrating, as a Minister, tying up different Departments, and it is frustrating as a constituency MP to see that two different departments in a local authority area do not always talk to one another as they might to serve our constituents needs.
We are committed to piloting this matter. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of and will support, I am sure, Aiming High for Disabled People, into which we are putting additional resources. Indeed, the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme has allocated £1 million in 2009-10, and £1 million in 2010-11, to cover the costs of individual budget pilots for disabled children. So we are putting resources in, as well as having ambition, but we need to establish what works.

Mark Harper: I am grateful to the Minister for setting out clearly the Governments ambition. This is a probing amendment, as I said, and I am pleased that he has outlined the commitment of his Department and the DCSF to work together closely on the way in which these benefits are delivered to families, and on ensuring that, where required, the services provided to disabled children can move seamlessly into those provided to adults. Given those assurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment 71, in clause 28, page 36, line 41, at end insert
(1) When P is exercising his rights under this Part the relevant authority shall be subject to a duty to cooperate with P..
I, too, welcome the measures in this part. As we heard in the evidence sittings, where this approach has been applied to the caring services in the local authorities that have taken it on board, it has liberated many people and has considerably improved their lives. We strongly welcome the measures that will extend that approach to disabled people.
I should like the Minister to clarify a few things before I discuss the specifics behind this probing amendment. We welcome this approach and the pilot. The work that has been done with the caring services shows that it is key that the system is as simple and as straightforward as possible, that it is person-focused and not target-driven, that it is responsive enough to the varying needs of those with fluctuating health conditions, and that people will be given accurate and accessible information. I look forward to the pilot demonstrating those particular aspects.
Why have I tabled amendment 71? If hon. Members consider clause 30, they will see that it details the relevant authorities. In the amendment, we are saying that where a person is exercising their rights under this part of the Bill, those named authorities or people whose services have been contracted to them have a duty to co-operate. We all know and can quote examples from our constituency case load in which a particular authority or even an official has a view on something and is not prepared to give constituents what they are entitled to.
As I say, this is a probing amendment that has been tabled because we believe that it needs to be made abundantly clear to the authorities that they have a duty to co-operate and that doing so is not an option. In a sense, that will not be a problem in relation to the pilot because the authorities will have been selected and will have agreed to it. However, as the measure is rolled out some authorities may be reluctant to participate. We believe that the cardinal principle that they have a duty to do so must be accepted.
If hon. Members read the briefing produced by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, although some of the issues that it raises will be dealt with under the equality Bill, they will see that one if its concerns is that particularly where there is public procurement, some of the rights that have been hard fought for and are beginning to bear fruit in relation to contracting out will become lost in the overall noise. Through the amendment, we are seeking to make it clear that the rights of a disabled person are enhanced not diminished by the Bill, and that it is not an option for an authority to participate or grant that person what they are entitled to. The amendment is about liberating disabled people, not leaving them hidebound by official rules and regulations.

Mark Harper: I support the concept of the amendment but believe that the hon. Gentleman has tabled his amendment to the wrong clause. The clause effectively sets out the purpose of the part, and a much better worded amendment is our amendment 45 to clause 31, which we shall have the opportunity to discuss later. Our amendment achieves the hon. Gentlemans objective rather more elegantly. The theme of the quality of Liberal Democrat amendments that is emerging this morning is firming up nicely, so I will close my remarks.

Jonathan R Shaw: Following that very modest comment, I am delighted to respond to the hon. Member for Rochdale, and I thank him for his amendment, which explicitly states that authorities must co-operate with an individual who exercises his or her right to control.
If it helps the Committee, the right to control creates a framework to improve flexibility in the services that disabled people use. It will do that through regulations that can place certain duties on public authorities. The right to control will shift the balance of power from the state to the individual and enable the individual to have a real say in how best to meet their support needs.
Regulations made under clause 31 can impose a duty on authorities to consult a disabled person when preparing a plan to meet their assessed needs. They can also empower an individual to require their authority to consult them when revising their care plan and taking account of their wishes. We have chosen to structure the clause in a way that empowers the disabled person, giving their views and wishes full consideration.
The intention is that the delivery of the right to control should be as seamless as possible for the individual, so that authorities and agencies will need to be aware of their obligations under the right to control. It is therefore implicit in the duty to consult that the result of the consultations should take account of the views of the individual. The authority in question will have to co-operate with them in order to reflect the persons needs and wishes properly. We expect authorities to be supportive in delivering their obligations, so we will ensure that the requirements and expectations of the new right are clearly communicated.
With those words of assurance, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment. He was right to move the amendment, to seek assurances from the Government, but it is about achieving a balance, about ensuring that there is some autonomy and decision making locallyI am sure he supports that for local authorities, and perhaps a little more than I do generally, hence what I am saying about the amendmentbut also some for the individual. That is what we are concerned about today, and what we are doing with the regulations will get the balance about right.

Paul Rowen: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. As I said at the start, the amendment was probing in nature, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 28 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 29

Relevant services

Mark Harper: I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 29, page 37, line 14, at end insert
(h) the provision of care services and community care for P..

David Amess: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 25, in clause 29, page 37, line 20, leave out subsections (5) and (6).
Amendment 70, in clause 29, page 37, line 20, after services, insert
, unless such exclusion would prevent P from achieving the matters set out in subsection (2).
Amendment 49, in clause 29, page 37, line 21, leave out paragraph (a).

Mark Harper: The clause defines the relevant services covered by this part of the Bill, and what services the regulation-making powers will cover:
services...provided to or for the benefit of a disabled person,
who in the Bill we call P,
which relate to...the following matters.
The list starts off well, laying out rather broad matters:
the provision of further education for
the disabled person and their
higher education...training...employment...continued employment,
and enabling them
to live independently or more independently
at home and
to overcome barriers to participation in society.
That is a very broad set of definitions, which would pretty much encompass most services provided by government.
That subsection went well, but unfortunately, further down the clause, which is where the amendments come in, there are the main exclusions in England and Wales. Some of them are around services provided to children, which the Minister and I have already discussed in clause 28, but the provision also excludes community care services and therefore omits all of social care. Social care will be one of the significant areas, important in enabling the disabled person to achieve almost any of those matters. If we do not have adequate, flexible and responsive social care, someone will clearly have barriers to their education and issues about securing training, getting to work and living independently. Excluding social care services leaves a big hole.
We discussed the matter in the evidence sessions, Mr. Amess, when your colleague was in the Chair. I probed the Minister then and challenged him about the provision. He said that he did not want to be too prescriptive and set out that there was already provision in other legislation about individual budgets and direct payments for adult social care. That is perfectly true, but there are problems in how such things will work and whether the procedures and processes are aligned. The Bill seems to look at things from the Departments point of view, rather than that of a disabled person. We should have one common framework for accessing all the services, and potentially we should put together all the funding streams and resources, so that they can be directed in a way that suits requirements.
The positive news that we heard during the evidence-taking session, from one of the Ministers officials, was that the Department did plan to work very closely with a steering group, and with the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government, in order to join up the pilots and subsequently when the pilots are rolled out. My concern is that, if we exclude community care services from this provision, we might regret it later. Were we to remove subsections (5) and (6) and include social care services, we could still specify in regulations the scope of pilots and how they are rolled out. We should give Ministers the ability to include those services, rather than restrict the scope of the regulations by excluding social care services.
Amendment 24, which the hon. Member for Rochdale has signed as well, would explicitly include the provision of care services and community care for disabled people, and amendment 24 would leave out subsections (5) and (6)the exclusion provisions relating to England and Wales, and Scotland respectively. That would widen Ministers powers and perhaps make it more likely that the Departments running the steering groups will join up with the Department of Health, social care services and local government. If we provide for that power, and if organisations know that the pilots can be drawn more widely, it might help to concentrate minds and engage local authorities in the running of the pilots. That is the help that I seek to provide.
Other organisations support widening the measures. For example, Leonard Cheshire Disability, which is a very well known campaigning organisation, is very supportive of the proposals in general, as we are, but it would like assurances over the funding streams and how the system will work in practice. It wants to know how the programmes may differ and whether it would be possible to include social care payments in the right to control. If we exclude from the Bill the ability to include social care, we will tie Ministers hands later, rather than leave those options open. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain why the Government have chosen this route, in a little more detail than he was able to during the evidence session. Does he think that so splitting up the funding streams is helpful? Was there any evidence from the pilots that the Government ran to lead one to the conclusion that excluding social care funding from this right to control process, and doing it separately, is an improvement?
During our evidence session we heard from Liz Sayce, the chief executive of RADAR, which is another well known, pan-disability campaigning organisation. It, too, is very supportive of the direction of travel in the Bill, but it is also very keen to know whether, after we have run the pilots and rolled them out, disabled people can look forward to a system where they can access all the support that they need via one gateway, where everything is joined up and where they can look at their needs and access one budget to cover the whole area of responsibility.
I would like to put on the record one or two quotes from organisations that support that approach. In its Second Reading briefing, Mind, which campaigns on mental health services, stated that it was
disappointed that community care services are to be excluded.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in its briefing on the Bill, pointed out that
the provisions in the Bill are limited in the scope...explicitly excluding services relating to health and social care. This is in stark contrast to the aspirations set out in the...Green Paper...The Commission proposes that explicit exemptions such as that relating to health and social care are removed from the face of the Bill and instead that the Bill relies on...regulation-making powers to extend (or remove) the right to control to different areas over time.
I have not spoken specifically to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about my amendments. However, reading what it said in its brief it appears to be endorsing amendment 25, which would leave out subsections (5) and (6). It says explicitly that it wants those subsections removed from the Bill, to give Ministers wider powers in the regulation-making sphere, so that they can extend those powers at a later date.
Similarly, RADAR has looked at whether it would be sensible to take out those exclusions in the Bill. Some of the work that it has done seemed to show that legally that would be perfectly permissible. It would be helpful if the Minister could set out the Governments latest thinking, subsequent to our evidence-taking sessions. If he wants to leave these exclusions in the Bill, it would also be helpful if he could give the Committee a little more detail about how exactly he proposes to work them through in the pilot. Moreover, what happens in the pilot if Ministers subsequently want to tie the right to control in this Bill with social care services? Will this exclusion tie Ministers hands in regulation-making powers, so that they subsequently have to come back to the House to amend primary legislation? If the Minister can reassure us about that issue, we may not have to trouble the Committee with a Division on this amendment.

Paul Rowen: Like the hon. Gentleman, I look forward to the Ministers explaining in more detail some of the reasoning behind this measure. We support amendments 24 and 25, but we have also tabled two other slightly different amendments, including amendment 70.
I want to explain what we are proposing to do in amendment 70. It is to ensure that services would not be excluded should they prevent some of the other aims set out early on in the subsection. Part 2 lists a range of matters such as:
(a) provision of further education for P;
(b) facilitating the undertaking by P of further education or higher education;
(c) the provision of training by P
and so on. What is different about amendment 70 is that we are not saying that there should be an automatic exclusion of those services, but only where the ability to control those services would prevent an individual from doing what is set out in part 2.
I had an example two years ago in my constituency of a young man who was going to university. The local authority had agreed that there could be direct payment and the university had agreed to passport over some of the support that it was going to provide. However, on the final weekend before the young man was due to go to university, we were still discussing with the primary care trust whether or not its element of care was going to be passported, because it clearly made much more sense for that young man to have a package of services rather than having different streams providing that support. In fact, having a package of services is a much more efficient use of public resources. At virtually the twelfth hour and the last minute, the PCT relented and agreed to direct payment from its element of the care. The young man was then able to purchase a total package that has enabled him, for the last two years, to go to Leeds university. That would not have happened without that provision of direct services.
In our view, that is an example of how excluding some of these services could act as a barrier. It goes back to my earlier point and my earlier amendment to clause 28, about the authority co-operating. In the case I have just referred to, the PCT was initially unwilling to co-operate and it was only after a considerable amount of pressure had been applied, let us say, that it relented. That is an example of how the exclusion of some of these services can have a detrimental effect for some of the very laudable aims that are outlined earlier in the Bill.
Amendment 49, which is the other amendment in my name, goes slightly further by not dealing with health services, but it seeks to include care services in direct payments.

The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).

Adjourned till this day at One oclock.